Mental disorders, abuse made girl ‘a handful’

HILO » A mental evaluation of child-abuse suspect Hyacinth Poouahi by Honolulu psychiatrist Martin Blinder throws light on the stresses in Poouahi's home at the time a 10-year-old girl in her home suffered abuse.

The girl was "essentially abandoned by her own mother," Blinder wrote in a report in Poouahi's case file.

"This young girl, 'the victim,' was apparently quite a handful after years of neglect and abuse in her own home, coupled with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder," Blinder wrote.

"Sometime in 2004, the victim ran out of medications and was acting out in a particularly provocative way," he wrote.

Poouahi told the Star-Bulletin in 2005 that she had known the girl's mother for three years before the mother left the girl with her in November 2004 and never came back.

The mother said, "This kid is driving me crazy," Poouahi said then.

Poouahi said she knew about the girl's attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder -- characterized by tantrums and recalcitrance -- but her mother gave Poouahi no medicine to treat the disorders.

Blinder, as well as two other mental experts, examined Poouahi after she started hearing voices last year telling her to commit suicide. The experts found her competent to stand trial.

Poouahi told the judge yesterday that she is taking diazepam, and then explained that is the same as the tranquilizer Valium.

Blinder made no mention of Poouahi's alleged borderline intellectual function mentioned by her lawyer, Keith Shigetomi. But he wrote, "She will require psychiatric supervision for the indefinite future."